Toronto residents may want to check out the February issue of Toronto Life which has an article highlighting the city's bedbug problem. The article is not online yet, and I haven't read it yet as my boyfriend just let me know about it now. The magazine is relatively popular locally, it seems a lot of my friends read it, so this should be good for raising awareness.

The Itch
Toronto is in the grip of a bedbug infestation, and no one—rich or poor, homeowner or renter—is safe. The good news is they won’t kill you. The bad news is they’ll make you wish you were dead. One woman’s horror story By Jane Wells

I read it the other day - I thought it was a pretty good read, although it could have been a lot longer and more detailed. Of course, perhaps I was looking for the "golden key" to rid myself of these things forever!

Perhaps one day, I too will be able to talk about it to someone other than my husband!

I have a friend who lives in Toronto who hasn't had to deal with this yet, and I pray she never will.

I can't talk about my experience from two years ago, or my current experience, to anyone except a close friend who also had them. My family does not understand -- they either are casual about it ("what's the big deal? Just treat them and move on") or they poke fun at my paranoia. I can barely talk about this to my current boyfriend, who is experiencing this with me as well and is much calmer about it...I don't want to come off as insane, so I am trying to remain calm as well, even though I am getting bitten and he isn't.

You said that you had bb experience two years ago and are having them again CURRENTLY? Is the recurrence due to moving to a new place, buying potentially infested furniture, traveling/staying in an infested hotel room, or is it from your two-year-ago-infestation that's never really completely gone?

I'm not sure where they came from. I hadn't had a problem for two years, so I doubt they came with me when I moved -- I didn't bring my bed over, and I don't have much stuff. We haven't bought any new furniture either, and we don't travel much. I am feeling completely miffed and confused.

oh noooooo, paranoidinnyc!! I am sorry to hear that. Did you move out of the old place after you've been BB Free for a while or move out right after BB attack? I've just completed my move very recently after being "no bb event" for a little over 2 months , so you can imagine how paranoid I am now...I will once again, count the days of BB free until ....I don't really know until when cause some people use 55 days as the magic threshold, while some don't; also some people like yourself will have to go through the second attack not knowing the cause after being "clear" for alot longer than 55 days.

I lived in the apartment that had the infestation for a year after it was treated, and had no bites. (I ordered a new bed, stopped living out of plastic bags, and so on, so if there had still been bugs in the apartment, I believe that they would have tried to bite me again -- anyway, so that was for one year.) Then I moved to another place in New York, brought my mattress with me, and lived there for another year without any incidents; no bites, no sign of anything. I didn't bring my mattress to my boyfriend's house because he already had beds there (with no signs of bugs for the first year we were dating -- I was sleeping over there regularly, but we didn't have any problems.) It wasn't until a month ago that I noticed two bites on my arm and thought, "oh, &($@#*(*."

I checked the bed, told my boyfriend about it, but we didn't see anything for another three weeks until he found a bug crawling across his comforter. The thing is, he killed the bug and threw it out without telling me what it was (because he knows I am so paranoid about these things), so I couldn't be positive that it was a bedbug that he'd found -- but I was pretty sure. After he told me about finding this bug, I woke up with three more bites on my arm (my boyfriend is not getting bitten at all, or at least not reacting to the bites) and called a local exterminator who came over and inspected the bed -- at first he didn't find much, but then he looked more carefully at a sheet covering the box spring and pointed out a tiny shell of a bug. This was last week; since then, I have been trying to find a good exterminator in New Jersey. Today, I found a tiny, tiny, tiny, bug (or shell of a bug? It was so so small) at the foot of the bed.

We have a bedbug dog coming over tomorrow. I have a couple of bites on my ankle from (I believe) three nights ago, and this morning I woke up and saw this quarter-sized red bruise on my wrist -- it doesn't itch, it feels and looks like a bruise, but it's red...ugh, so gross.

Anyway, I'll post on here again once the bedbug dog comes (I'm using the New Jersey company Action Pest Control for the dog, and am considering using A-3 Superior for thermal remediation if I decide I don't want to use Action's methods. The guy I spoke to at A-3 Superior today was unimpressive though, and their Web site really freaks me out (it reminds me of the fake Web site that Stephen Glass creates in Shattered Glass) so I'm not sure what to do.

I really don't think I brought them to my boyfriend's house after being bite-less for two years...I mean, these things are so unbearably creepy that maybe we need to extend their 18-month lifespan to 24 months, but I sure hope not. My guess is that they could have come from anywhere. Taxis, buses, traveling. I know that doesn't really help you feel less paranoid (and it doesn't help me either). I totally understand your fears though, and sorry for having a story that seems bound to depress...I am trying to decide how I feel about this, because I don't want to retreat from society, and I don't want to freak out in front of my boyfriend, and I want to go out in NYC and have a life, and I don't want to live out of plastic bags. So I'll see how the next week goes and move on from there.

P.S. One thing I wish I'd done differently -- my boyfriend never used mattress covers on any of his beds (until now) so I wish we'd done that when I started sleeping over...but it had been a year since my experience with it, and I loved sleeping on an uncovered, "normal" bed so so much that I tried not to think about my experience and move on. Obviously, the joke's on me now.

When my on-line research turned up these kinds of numbers, panic set in, though I did take a certain twisted solace in the legion of other mad people ranting on bedbug forums. I wasn’t the only itchy sleep-deprived person reading these Web sites in the middle of the night.

aha. good article. i had a chuckle at the "in the end, my brother and his partner moved to hamilton", as if that were the worst possible outcome (i was born there). not that they'll be safe there. i know of at least two people on this forum who have had terrible trouble with BBs in hamilton.

all the same, well-written article that conveys the extended misery of BBs very well.